A Glimpse of the Energy Future  

Renewable Energy Access has a mini-series on energy efficiency for buildings from the Oak Ridge National LAboratory

Buildings offer the greatest opportunity for energy conservation.

The cul-de-sac of 40 small houses is everything you might expect in American suburbia. Minivans sit parked in perfectly proportioned driveways. Clumps of kids ride bikes around the neighborhood. Dogs bark behind backyard fences. A nearby four-lane drones in the background. What is not so obvious is that this tiny community offers a peephole to the future -- a future in which homes will generate and conserve as much energy as they require.

Most of the time, even resident Kim Charles does not notice the solar panels on her roof, the whisper of her SEER 17 heat pump water heater, the airtight, moisture-managed construction of structural insulated panels, the integrated design that allows most of the home's plumbing to reside within one wall, saving precious energy.

What Charles does notice is a power bill that amounts to less than a daily cup of coffee. Thanks to a 15 cent-per-kilowatt-hour credit paid by the Tennessee Valley Authority for electricity piped back to the power grid, her meter literally runs backwards on sunny days. In 2006, she paid an average of 41 cents per day for electricity.

Charles's home is among five in this Habitat for Humanity community located in Lenoir City, Tenn., and outfitted with the latest in energy-saving technologies as part of a research project designed and implemented by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and co-funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The project serves as a linchpin in a broad array of research programs at ORNL that strive to address America's most energy-inefficient sector: buildings. ...

Residential floor space per capita in the U.S. is growing, driven by construction of larger homes as well as a decline in the average number of occupants, and the number of power-hungry accoutrements to be found in today's households—from computers to video games to plasma televisions—is on the rise. As a result, residential energy consumption, unless aggressively addressed, is expected to grow 1% per year until 2025.

On the commercial side, energy use is projected to increase an average annual rate of 2% between now and 2025, driven primarily by use of computers and other office equipment. Such growth has placed stress on aging infrastructure, which, coupled with weather incidents that include the feisty tornado and hurricane seasons and record-breaking heat waves of recent years, result in periods of peak demand and power outages that hamper business and boost energy costs. Soaring prices for natural gas and petroleum also contribute to the problem, and experts believe this combination of factors has created a critical mass, driving the nation toward long overdue adoption of energy-efficient technologies and construction practices.

"If we continue to construct the same kind of inefficient buildings that put high demands on the power grid, we will have to build additional supply-side infrastructure to serve them," says Patrick Hughes, leader of ORNL's buildings technology research program. "What we need is to fundamentally change the way we approach the construction and operation of our buildings. If done right, we, as a nation, can have our cake and eat it too. We can spend less going forward on buildings and supply-side infrastructure and vastly reduce the energy consumption and climate changing emissions of the built environment." ...

Approaching construction from a sustainable perspective is nothing new for European nations or countries such as Japan. In the U.S., however, cheap labor and cheap power have allowed traditional "stick construction" practices to remain unchanged for decades.

The problem, Christian says, is that consumers are unaccustomed to thinking about the energy their homes and offices demand. They simply pay the bills. But Christian says when he describes the Habitat development and the potential impact of even moderate energy saving measures in the frequent meetings and seminars he attends, audiences respond very personally.

"I have noticed that when I tell people that these new houses have energy costs of approximately 50 cents a day, they tend to think about their own homes," Christian says. "People respond to the idea. They just need education and awareness."

Kim Charles did not ponder energy efficiency until she agreed to become the recipient of the fourth Habitat home in the Lenoir City community more than three years ago. However, since she has moved from her old, drafty house where utility bills sometimes climbed above $200 for a single month, Charles, and especially her young son, Brian, take more time to do little things that conserve energy, such as keep the lights off when the sun is coming through the window.

Charles loves her home, not just for the energy savings technologies but also for its cathedral ceiling, the windows that let in plenty of sunlight, the neighborhood that provides Brian a chance to play with friends. "My home is brighter and more cheerful than my old house," she says. "This is just a great place to live."

Charles has also become accustomed to a sort of celebrity that comes with owning a home where one pays as little as 40 cents per day to keep the lights on and the washer running. She'll often look out her window to see parades of students, industry representatives, government officials and media passing by-or knocking on her door ... trying to catch a glimpse of the future.

TreeHugger has a post on solar hydrogen.

We've often heard the media and government officials talk up the potential for a future hydrogen economy to revolutionize the way we consume and produce energy. And while we've seen some promising applications of hydrogen as a fuel source in the last few months, it still seems very unlikely that we'll ever see a hydrogen-based energy market on the scale that some are envisioning. That's not to say that some scientists aren't still trying to gradually make this a reality: Craig Grimes, a professor of electrical engineering at Penn State University, has just announced that he and his team are close — in their words, "only a couple of problems away" — to developing a cheap, viable photoelectrolytic technology, that is one that would split water into hydrogen and oxygen by using sunlight.

While most current hydrogen production processes split hydrogen from natural gas — an inefficient technique that consumes energy and produces greenhouse gases — Grimes' method would rely on thin films made of titanium iron oxide nanotube arrays that could split water under natural light. According to Grimes, this method is much more eco-friendly since it only requires the natural energy of sunlight and doesn't produce GHGs.

The researchers already knew from previous trials that titanium oxide offered superior charge-transfer properties and corrosion stability, making it an ideal candidate for durable, inexpensive solar cells. Having used ultraviolet light to test earlier versions of their nanotubes — which only contains about 5% of the solar spectrum's energy — Grimes and his colleagues were keenly aware that they would need to find a way to harness a larger portion of the visible spectrum to make the nanotube arrays more efficient and viable.

Using a form of iron called hematite — a low band gap semiconductor material — they were able to capture a much larger portion of the solar spectrum in their arrays. In their recently published study, they reported a photoconversion rate of 1.5%, the second highest rate ever achieved using an iron oxide-related material.

They are now focusing on optimizing the nanotube architecture to obtain an efficiency closer to the theoretical maximum for materials with hematite (around 12.9%). Grimes is certainly hopeful about the prospects for his group's technology to transcend other production methods: "As I see it, we are a couple of problems away from having something that will revolutionize the field of hydrogen generation by use of solar energy."

After Gutenberg has some comments on the thin film solar market, following on from a recent report than thin film PV may provide 20% of US energy needs in the not too distant future.

While only five percent of the entire solar PV market in 2005, TFPV (Thin Film Photo Voltaic laminates) seem to have become the choice of commercial property managers for building integrated photo voltaic systems. TFPV manufacturers that are ramping up production capacity include First Solar, Fuji Electric, Nanosolar, Sanyo, Uni-Solar and G24i.

It is this blog’s considered opinion that Fraser is being overly optimistic in foreseeing that PV could eventually account for as much as 20 percent of the U.S. market’s energy needs. This would require a very significant shift in the U.S. energy market, something akin to a national feed-in tarrif.

On the other hand, the forecast that TFPV could account for 35 percent of the photovoltaics market by 2015 is possible if the PV market continues to grow. In other words, as market is created, the cheaper product could account for most of the increase.

TFPV mass production can occur by means of simple printing. Development of a coating machine could operate at high speed in a printing line without degradation of the multiple photoactive layers is still underway. Eventually, plastic solar cells could become the standard rooftop for commerical building solar panels because printing TFPV with R2R (Roll 2 Roll) machines “has the potential for lowering capital costs by as much as 75 percent, reducing waste and increasing throughput.” With greater availability and lower cost per kilowatt we eventually could see solar panels on every building.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that arctic sea ice has declined to its lowest level ever.

Overview of current sea ice conditions

Yesterday and today, Arctic sea ice surpassed the previous single-day (absolute minimum) record for the lowest extent ever measured by satellite. Sea ice extent has fallen below the 2005 record low absolute minimum and is still melting. Sea ice extent is currently tracking at 5.26 million square kilometers (2.02 million square miles), just below the 2005 record absolute minimum of 5.32 million square kilometers (2.05 million square miles).

Current sea ice conditions: August 16, 2007

Arctic sea ice has now surpassed all previous records for the lowest absolute minimum extent. Satellite measurements recorded the previous record, 5.32 million square kilometers (2.05 million square miles), on September 20–21, 2005. As of this morning, the extent was 5.26 million square kilometers (2.02 million square miles).

The Age reports that Hurricane Dean is expected to turn into a category 5 storm as it heads towards the gulf of Mexico - hopefully it doesn't do as much damage to the region as the 2005 storms did. In the meantime its likely to keep oil prices high and the editors at The Oil Drum busy.

Hurricane Dean is expected to grow into a ferocious Category 5 storm as it passes Jamaica and moves toward the oil and gas rigs of the Gulf of Mexico after it smashed into several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people. With winds near 230km/h, Dean was a Category 4 storm, the second-highest level on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale and capable of widespread destruction.

The US National Hurricane Centre said it was expected to strengthen to Category 5, with top sustained winds in excess of 249km/h, before ploughing directly over Jamaica toward the Gulf, home to a third of US domestic crude oil and 15 per cent of natural gas production. Dean roared through the narrow channel between the Lesser Antilles islands of St Lucia and Martinique early today, crossing from the Atlantic Ocean to the warm Caribbean Sea.

Its progress was being nervously watched by energy markets, which have been skittish about hurricanes since powerful storms in 2004 and 2005, including Ivan, Katrina and Rita, disrupted oil and gas production. Transocean, Royal Dutch Shell, Murphy Oil and other companies pulled dozens of workers from offshore rigs.

Links :

* Houston Chronicle - TVA reactor shut down; cooling water from river too hot. Nuclear power and global warming don't mix.
* Clean Break - Anti-nuke folks not nuclear industry's only problem. So is peak oil.
* Business Standard - Uranium shortage hits nuclear plans
* Clean Break - Finavera proposes Canada's first offshore wave project
* YouTube - Diablo electric smart car vs Ferrari F430
* Green Car Congress - RITE Develops Cellulosic Biobutanol for Blending in Diesel Fuels
* EcoGeek - 9 Steps to Cheaper Greener Flight
* The Age - Brothel pumping the good oil. Business fights to keep business in the face of rising oil prices.
* The Age - Govt rejects Labor's APEC emissions call. "This is a 'Made in the USA' declaration, covered with Australian coal dust"
* The Age - PM a hypocrite on deforestation: Greens
* Freakonomics - Are Man-Made Tornadoes the Answer to Global Warming?
* Reuters - Australian scientists call for ocean network probe
* IHT - Dutch crown prince warns against prioritizing biofuels over food
* The Times - Why watching SCO war games is a waste of energy. "Out of all the West’s worries about the SCO, the greatest should be control of energy supplies".
* Village Voice - Iraq: The News You Haven't Read
* Once Upon A Time - The Worsening Nightmare
* TPM Muckraker - FISA Court to Gov't: Why Shouldn't We Disclose Surveillance Rulings ?
* Cryptogon - Behavior Detection Officers in U.S. Airports. Word of the day: facecrime.
* Rigorous Intuition - A Cascading Of Novelty